I GOT IT!
Man! I really am glad! I thought I'd never make it...
I had several problems to overcome, some specific to the card, others kernel related. I'll post all here in case someone has similar problems:
1- My SB16 card does not seem to be PnP, so, the correct ports, irqs and DMAs must be passed to the module. Also, the isapnp option *must* be set to 0 (omitting the option is no good, it must be explicit). This way I was able to load the module (it would refuse to load if the above conditions were not met). Also besides the hardware setting I set the 'enable' option to 1. I didn't try it with 0 but I have a feeling it would not have worked!
2- For some reason, the install of the new modutils (2.6 kernel) did not update the /sbin location (as in moving the old binnaries to .old and installing symlinks there). This location is where the alsautils get their module binnaries. Fixing this allowed to run alsaconf without modinfo errors, but it did not detect my card (possibly again because it is not PnP)
That was not a big deal; I could load the module and see the card in /proc/asound/cards; the worst was that I could not run alsamixer!! Or any other util, for that matter (aplay, amixer, amidi...). They all failed with some sort of a 'no device error'! But the card was right there in /proc/asound/card0!!
3- The breakthrough: I recently upgraded the kernel, from 2.4.28 to 2.6.15.5. All went well except for this ALSA prob. What I didn't know (but found out the hard way!) was that devfs has been removed from kernels since the 2.6.13 release. As I did not install it externally, or udev, I had no device managing! This was tough to figure! People who use mainstream distros need not worry about this problem as it comes already chewed for them; but I run an almost custom system, it was easy to overlook this issue (I know... the removal of devfs *is* described in the kernel Changes doc, but I'm only human... :P). Anyway, I think that many of the cries for help all over the web (for alsamixer snd_ctl_open funtion error) may be due to this problem. Hope this helps!
Anyway, I installed udev and: tadaaaa! alsamixer! and then... Music! It's these small gratifications that make it worth messing with the penguin! OK, I know there are lots of gurus out there that wouldn't even have the problem in the first place, but I was able to solve it! I still have a grin on my face! (please share the moment with me Thetargos, you were of great help! Credit is also due to Clemens Ladisch from the alsa-user mailing list)
As a bonus
:
I was able to build the monolythic kernel, with built-in sound (in fact, when I installed udev I had already gone built-in). The only thing I needed to do for the 'module' to load correctly along with the kernel was passing its options at the boot line (through lilo). More specifically, I added an append line to lilo.conf like the following:
Code:
append= "snd-sb16.isapnp=0 snd-sb16.irq=5 snd-sb16.port=0x220 ..."
Although the options are just called isapnp, irq and port, the snd-sb16 has to prefix all option names for the kernel to know to which of its millions of pieces you are talking to (this is where the input from Clemens Ladisch came in handy). After rebooting the system will behave as if you had loaded the snd-sb16 module. And it works!
Thanks all, hope this helps someone out!
big_manel